*~ACCOUNTS~*

*******BEST VIEWED ON DESKTOP*****

Okay, very quick intro if you have no clue who we are. We write weekly reviews and essays on art and games on this site, we’ve been doing TWP since 2015 (!!!) and because of all those years plugging away, building up XP, we sometimes get emails asking us to do freelance bits and bobs on top of that.

We never thought it could be a job that we make actual money from. Honestly, we started the whole thing as a joke and now it's real. But working in the creative industries as 2 self-employed people has been a ride. And it’s funny saying that because no one is making us do this, but we came to love it and care about the work and realised we wanted to figure out how to make it sustainable.

If you want the tl;dr: We do odd freelance jobs to make money where we can, this has always been precarious and irregular, but since Gab got sick the freelance race only makes her sicker. The accounts keeps track of how much we’re paid for the lil jobs. We continue to rely massively on support directly from our readers in the form of Patreon subs, and one-off donations on Paypal and Ko-Fi. We have a Discord server now so any £ support however little grants the person entry to a lovely online community. We both have day jobs again. We did go full-time TWP to write the book, but sunday times bestseller list pending, we had to pick up part-time work again to stay afloat.

I know a lot of people just keep all this stuff to themselves, keep it a mystery. But we published our accounts pretty early on because we were getting invited into art schools to do lectures and every university offered a different speaker’s fee. It drove us a bit mad. As sooooon as we published our accounts, that ceased to be an issue, and not just with universities but with other people looking to hire us for anything. We could point at our public accounts here on this website and they would have to treat us properly. The other reason for publishing was because it’s just useful to have a reference for these things when so few speak about what they get paid in the visual arts. So yep, hope it’s a useful yardstick for ya. And even if it isn’t useful, hope you enjoy having a nose.

original spreadsheet (2016-21):

2021 update:

In April, we officially registered as a limited partnership and got a joint bank account for official TWP bisniss. It means we’re basically self-employed together, rather than being sole traders. We file our taxes as a joint TWP entity, our lovely accountants help us do the cosmic maths to figure out the split, and we pay taxes separately on what we’ve each earned over the year. The joint account means we can invoice together and also share joint expenses. Zarina spends 2 hours at the end of every month figuring out who made what and pays out the money in a regular monthly paycheck – which is nicer, more predictable and normal. More grown up and sensible too.

We still do the odd freelance job here and there, but there’s a bunch of other stuff that gets left out of that sheet above. So new accounts sheet format for APR 2021 onwards! Hopefully it's more useful and representative, gives you an idea of how we practically keep ourselves up n running and what the reality of being ~independent art critics~ looks like for us.

EXPLAINER:

The top bar:
money out is shared expenses
money in is the income
Spaces balance is the money we’ve put aside in little saving pots (It’s there technically, but it’s not necessarily ours to spend immediately)
Main balance is the amount in the main bank account that is ours to spend or pay out.
I’ve been keeping track of who’s making what in the ZM fee / GDLP fee column – it just describes the breakdown of where the money coming in is actually going. the numbers are in grey.
Expense category is a note for our accountants, so they can do their job in breaking down expenses for HMRC.
the notes are for us, to keep track of what each item relates to (for income & expenses) – so that might be of interest to you too.

the numbers in the ZM/GDLP fee column:
in light blue: i set aside £200 for both of us each month to run through, because we do charge some individual expenses through the TWP card. i pay out what’s left of that every month and top it up – it looks more complicated than it is, it’s just a way of making sure we’re not short changing each other from the shared pot.
the numbers in pink: this is what we actually get paid each month. As you can see, it varies!
If you’re looking at any 22/23/24 sheets, there might be numbers in dark blue, that’s additional pay from our book advance.
We set the big lump sum aside and paid ourselves from it every month, so we could spread it out rather than blowing it all in one go.

UNSEEN: we also go through our personal bank accounts to pull any relevant expenses paid for on our own individual cards. we aren’t posting them here bc to be completely honest, you’ll be able to tell where we live and where we hang out regularly. not about to doxx ourselves in the name of financial transparency. But we format that similarly to the sheets above, just for money going out, and our accountants help us do the maths when it comes to claiming for things like heating/electricity bills when we’re working from home. We can claim food when travelling or working late in the office, we can claim books, films, theatre tickets, gallery entrance fees. anything that ends up being written about or informing the writing in some way can be claimed as a research expense. bear that in mind when doing your own taxes!!

2021-25

^^^ all of the above accounting stuff is the way that works for us, what we’ve figured out over the years. We have accountants to help us do the actual maths. We are not incredibly financially literate, so please don’t take our example as gospel. If you need help navigating your own accounts, Artist Union England have a lil guide explaining and breaking it down. The full guide is for members but basic info is available for free and it’s pretty comprehensive. If you have specific questions, you can call HMRC’s helpline – they get busy at the end of Jan when the self-assessment deadline is looming, so get in there with ur Qs ahead of time.

also, if you’re an artist/curator/critic/art worker in some or any form who publishes your accounts, and you’d like us to flag your accounts/yardstick as a resource for others – let us know !!!! I can drop the links down here so we have as many yardsticks as poss :) lovely!